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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29262378">Staring Back At Me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders'>UniverseOnHerShoulders</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Take Me To The Stars [47]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Mental Health Issues, Nostalgia, Past Relationship(s), Reunions</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 13:09:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,028</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29262378</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>All things considered, Clara Oswald knows that she shouldn't want to see the Zygon who had kidnapped, tortured and threatened her again. And yet she can't help but feel a sense of longing for someone from her life before immortality, and a pull towards Bonnie that she doesn't understand; is it curiosity? Concern? Egomania? Broaching the subject with the Doctor, she manages to get her own way, but when Bonnie makes some personal revelations, Clara is left floundering.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Thirteenth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald, Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald, Zygon Bonnie &amp; Clara Oswin Oswald</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Take Me To The Stars [47]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1139201</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Staring Back At Me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I want to see Bonnie.”</p><p>Clara’s announcement is unexpected; she can see that by the way it lands with the Doctor, who flinches at the words, her shoulders sagging over the console at the merest mention of the Zygon who had once held Clara captive and slaughtered a sizeable platoon of UNIT shoulders. Nobody, however, is more surprised than Clara by her proclamation; she’d been mulling over the idea for some time now, but until the words were spoken aloud, she hadn’t realised how much she needs to see the creature who had once impersonated her, tried to kill her, and tried to commit a mass genocide of the human race. It’s really not a logical assertion or a sensible wish, but there’s something deep in her chest that compels her to go back to London; an itch she tries concertedly hard not to scratch, afraid as she is of what might come pouring out.</p><p>Clara can’t help but feel a pull back to her own time period and her own city. She and the Doctor have been spending large chunks of time in Sheffield with the team, which is painful in its own way; it’s northern, which makes her chest ache with longing for Blackpool; it’s a city, which makes her yearn for London; but it’s not quite <em>enough</em> of either, leaving her oddly unsatisfied by each visit they make. London itself has been a taboo subject. The Doctor has been keen to avoid it; keen to keep her away from the city and the time period in which she – technically speaking – died. Clara understands that; knows how potentially catastrophic it could be to bump into an acquaintance or neighbour or student or colleague. The neural block is held safely and securely in a box atop her own TARDIS’s console, but the desire to use it on anyone is minimal; she doesn’t want to cause that pain, not ever again, regardless of who they are or what they might have seen. Still, her heart aches for a touch of normalcy; a desire to see if the world is continuing without her in it. It’s selfish and stupid and entirely self-indulgent, but Clara doesn’t care. Seeing Bonnie is a tiny step in retracing the familiar; a tiny snatching-back of what had once been hers.</p><p>“Why?” the Doctor asks, her voice wary. “Why her? Why now?”</p><p>“I just…” Clara dithers for a moment, unsure how to explain herself in a way that the Doctor will understand, and eventually settling for: “I need to. I can’t explain why, but I do.”</p><p>“She might-”</p><p>“Tell Kate? She won’t.”</p><p>“Tell Osgood.”</p><p>“She won’t.”</p><p>“You seem very sure of that.”</p><p>“I was her prisoner, remember? I know her. I know how she thinks. I trust her. I thought you did, or you wouldn’t have installed her at UNIT?”</p><p>The Doctor lets out a bitter laugh, turning and looking at Clara with an expression of disbelief and dislike that takes Clara’s breath away. She’s unused to such visceral detestation on the Doctor’s face, except towards several notable exceptions. She’d never thought Bonnie might be one of them. “You know as well as I do that that was a punishment.”</p><p>Clara raises her eyebrows. She’d always assumed it had been-</p><p>“It was a second chance,” the Doctor clarifies, as though reading her mind. Perhaps she is. “But it was also a punishment. She would have killed you, Clara. She would have killed you and then everyone you love; she would have killed every one of your students, your friends, your neighbours. Your dad. Linda.”</p><p>“That last one wouldn’t have been a great loss.”</p><p>“Don’t,” the Doctor tells her flatly, her eyes cold and hard in the same way they always are when Clara tries to make jokes about her own mortality. “Don’t joke about it. I don’t find it funny that you almost died.”</p><p>“And then I did die,” Clara notes in a blunt tone, and the Doctor winces. All this time, and the Time Lady still finds it painful to be reminded of Trap Street; Clara isn’t sure whether to be touched or exasperated. “Remember? Then I un-died. She can’t hurt me now.”</p><p>“That’s what you think. She can still cause problems for you… for me.”</p><p>“Doctor,” Clara says impatiently, her patience beginning to wane. “I want to see her. I’m not a child. I don’t need your permission to do it; I’ve got my own ship, and I can go myself. But I wanted your…” she dithers, unsure of the right word. “Approval, I suppose. Stupid though that is.”</p><p>“I’m just saying…”</p><p>“Well, don’t,” Clara snaps. “I want to see her. I need to see her. And if you want to try and stop me, that’s fine; but I will not take kindly to being constrained to your ship. I might have to start fiddling with things…”</p><p>“You wouldn’t dare…” the Doctor says with wide-eyed horror. “After last time…”</p><p>“You mean when you left me here while you went chasing after a rogue Slitheen on Oxford Street with Yaz? And I uncoupled that fluid link?”</p><p>The memory alone is spectacular. There had been a short-circuit, and then the swimming pool had flooded several of the surrounding rooms with bright purple water. The Doctor’s horror had been oddly pleasing, and she hadn’t tried to leave Clara behind since; instead, she’d just taken to avoiding the capital entirely. Clara isn’t sure if this development is better or worse.</p><p>Clara smiles sweetly at the Time Lady, who scowls back.</p><p>“Fine,” the Doctor mutters sourly. “But on your own head, so be it.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The venue Clara has picked is underwhelming, although that had been the point. A chain coffee shop on the outskirts of Reading, it’s nondescript and depressingly dull, safer than London itself, but still easily reached. The invitation had been anonymously extended to Bonnie, and Clara had strode with purpose into the stuffy interior in a motorcycle helmet, removing it only once out of range of the CCTV cameras as the Doctor had ordered at the tills, and plonking herself down at a sofa in the corner, facing away from the door as a precautionary measure. </p><p>She jumps when a latte is put down in front of her, and tries not to fidget too conspicuously. Her left leg jumps as she taps her foot impatiently, and the Doctor takes a seat beside her, setting a steadying hand on her thigh and giving a gentle squeeze.</p><p>To her credit, the Time Lady does not chide her; does not offer words of criticism or rebuke, or even the words ‘I told you so’. Instead, she offers Clara a reassuring smile and moves her hand from Clara’s thigh to her palm, lacing their fingers together and giving her a small, emboldening nod. Clara tries to take courage from that; from the warmth of their clasped palms, from the reassuring presence of the Doctor; from her quiet encouragement. And yet anxiety stirs in the pit of her stomach; she’s beginning to regret this decision fiercely, telling herself that she’s made a terrible mistake, and she’s on the verge of leaving when a dark-haired woman in a long scarf drops onto the sofa opposite them, pushing her glasses up her nose with a fingertip. Clara and the Doctor break apart in an instant, Clara twisting her hands self-consciously in her lap.</p><p>“Hello,” Bonnie-as-Osgood says brightly, looking entirely unruffled to find herself sat opposite someone who is, for all intents and purposes, dead. “You died.”</p><p>“Yes, ah...” Clara dithers, suddenly unsure what to say to begin to explain herself. “About that…”</p><p>There’s a soft <em>thwick</em> and Clara is suddenly face to face with herself; in the long scarf and cricket-style pullover, she looks ridiculous but strangely adorable, and Bonnie smiles at her with fondness as she tilts her head to the side and contemplates Clara’s shock.</p><p>“Don’t look so surprised,” Bonnie rolls her eyes. “This was always one of my favourites.”</p><p>“I… well…”</p><p>“I’ll get Bonnie a coffee,” the Doctor says with unusual tact, getting to her feet and fishing through her pockets for her wallet, which Clara scoops up from the table and hands to her wordlessly. “Latte? Cappuccino? Anything else long and unpronounceable?”</p><p>“I’ll have a vanilla latte, please,” Bonnie says brightly, settling back in her seat and smirking at Clara as the Doctor heads back to the counter. “You were definitely dead. I had to identify your body; make sure it wasn’t some Zygon trick; another failed uprising. It wasn’t. I hoped it was – a trick, that is, not an uprising – but no; it was you. Dead as a doornail; white as a sheet. Entirely unblemished. That stumped us for a long time; how a perfectly healthy English teacher could just keel over in the street.”</p><p>Clara blinks hard, disconcerted to hear her own death discussed so frankly. The Doctor has always tried to shield her from what had come <em>after</em>; from the terrible, heart-rending weeks and months after Trap Street and how they had impacted the ones she loved. She knows about the memorial wall at Coal Hill, but this? This is news. It robs her of breath and leaves her chest aching; it makes her feel oddly vulnerable and yet it’s also strangely impersonal, as though she and her own former, dead self are different people bound together with a glimmering thread.</p><p>“What did you conclude?” she asks at last, taking a sip of her own coffee and willing her hands to stop shaking.</p><p>“Heart failure. Freak accident. Very dull. I was hoping for alien poisoning or something exciting. Or maybe she-” Bonnie jerks her head towards the Doctor, still queuing for coffee. “He, whatever, had done something. But no; spontaneous heart failure. Freak thing; no one could have seen it coming, least of all us when we approved your medical certificate for the year. You looked so peaceful; like you were sleeping. It was a nice way to go, I suppose. Quick and probably painless. What actually happened?”</p><p>“Quantum Shade.”</p><p>“I thought those were myths?”</p><p>“So you’ve heard of them?”</p><p>“Of course I have,” Bonnie arches an eyebrow. “They’re incredibly rare and almost impossible to control. Dangerous. Unpredictable. Devious. How did you get tangled up with one?”</p><p>“Heroics.”</p><p>“Of the suicidal variety?”</p><p>Clara sucks in a breath, and Bonnie laughs, but not unkindly.</p><p>“I’ve been in your head,” she reminds Clara softly, and Clara sucks in a breath, feeling oddly exposed and impossibly vulnerable. “I’ve seen your thoughts… <em>all </em>of them. Even those ones. It was a hypothesis, when you were found, especially as you weren’t at home. Nobody understood why you were in some dingy backstreet, but I thought – well, I had my suspicions. And then when they said heart failure, I thought… well, at least in some way, you’d got what you wanted: a way out. Was it a relief?”</p><p>“I’m sorry?”</p><p>“Dying. Was it a relief?”</p><p>Clara is floored by the question. There’s no malice in Bonnie’s tone; no hostility, just an open curiosity that robs Clara of the ability to think. <em>Had</em> it been a relief? In some ways, she supposed, it had; there had been an end to the raw, throbbing ache she’d felt in her chest each day when she’d opened her eyes, and the anxiety that had threatened to overwhelm her. There had been an end to the constant need to push back against those sensations; an end to the need to prove herself by putting on a front and pretending that everything was fine and taking the kind of foolish risks that the Doctor usually favoured. With the knowledge that her own death was, at some point and in some way, to come, and to come imminently, she had felt a calmness that she had yearned for over the preceding months and weeks and days; a sense of complete stillness and resignation, and on Trap Street, she had stepped up and met Death as an equal, as though he had been with her for a long time. She supposes he had, in a way. Part of her had died with her mother; another part when she had stepped into the Doctor’s timestream in self-sacrifice. Part of her had faded away with the passing of the Doctor’s first face she’d seen; and another part of her when Danny had breathed his last on the tarmac of an unremarkable London street. She hadn’t been sure that there had been much left of her, towards the end; now she realises that what had been left of her soul had been in tatters, and that death had come to claim her as a well-received old friend, bringing peace to a mind and heart that had spent so long troubled that they had no longer known how to be whole.</p><p>“Yes,” Clara admits in a small voice. “Yes, it was.”</p><p>“You’re not dead now, though.”</p><p>“No, that was… that was the Doctor’s doing. Not this one; the previous one. He… he pulled some strings. Made some sacrifices. I can’t die now.”</p><p>“What, ever?”</p><p>“I mean, maybe if I was incinerated, or beheaded, but… no, I can’t die. And I haven’t tried… either of those things.”</p><p>“Just what the universe needs,” Bonnie grins wickedly at her. “An immortal egomaniac.”</p><p>Clara laughs, taking another sip of her coffee, and a thought occurs to her.</p><p>“Who found me?” Clara blurts, needing the question answered. She feels a tangible sense of guilt that someone has been living with the memory of her dead body for years; possibly haunted by it each time they close their eyes.</p><p>“Kate,” Bonnie says quietly, and Clara winces. “We got… well, we received a tip-off. Anonymous number. Said there was something of interest that we needed to see. We’ve never-”</p><p>“I know who it was.”</p><p>“Who?”</p><p>“The person whose Quantum Shade killed me,” Clara laughs bitterly and without mirth. “The Doctor probably told her to do the right thing; get me back to people who… well, people who cared,” she shakes her head, her guilt intensifying with each passing second. “How did Kate…”</p><p>“She’s been having a lot of therapy. Not just about you – UNIT’s been massively wound down now, so we’ve defected to Torchwood. Between, you know, you, and Jac, and then the Doctor suddenly not having a clue who you were, and then her baby – metaphorically – being destroyed, I don’t think she’s been coping very well. But she’s doing better now. Stronger. Happier. She goes to your grave every week and leaves flowers. Keeps it clean. I think she finds it hard to find the space.”</p><p>“You mean to go?”</p><p>“No, to leave flowers. A lot of people miss you, you know.”</p><p>The Doctor sets a mug down in front of Bonnie and then returns to her seat beside Clara, taking her partner’s hand protectively. Clara feels oddly self-conscious about this and tries to pull away, but Bonnie’s eyes light up and her mouth quirks into a fond smirk.</p><p>“Finally,” the Zygon notes, shaking her head in exasperation. “You both took your time.”</p><p>“I’m sorry?” the Doctor asks in confusion, looking from Bonnie to Clara, who flushes pink.</p><p>“She’s been madly in love with you since she met you,” Bonnie tells the Doctor, as Clara’s cheeks turn a darker shade of scarlet. “Oh, she might not have realised it until Trenzalore, but… still. Quite sweet really. You wasted a lot of time though, didn’t you? Blimey. Better late than never, I suppose…”</p><p>“You’ve…” the Doctor looks at Clara with confusion, her mouth falling open. “Why didn’t you…”</p><p>“You were a bit busy,” Clara notes weakly, hanging her head. “Regenerating and being Scottish and… such. I told you in the Cloisters, remember?”</p><p>“Well, I do now. I didn’t… Bonnie’s right,” the Doctor shakes her head in disbelief. “We did waste a lot of time.”</p><p>“Why did you ask me here?” Bonnie demands to know. “I know it’s not just to make chit-chat.”</p><p>“It… it kind of is,” Clara shrugs, looking back up at her and tucking her legs underneath herself on the sofa. “I just… I needed to see someone from… before. Someone who reminded me of who I once was. And I wanted… I wanted to make sure you’re alright.”</p><p>“Why wouldn’t I be?”</p><p>“Because you were placed in a very visible role in an organisation full of people who loathed you for what you’d done.”</p><p>“They warmed up to me,” Bonnie says brusquely, but Clara notes the way her hands tighten around her mug, and the way the porcelain rattles against her teeth as she takes a sip. “It took them a little while… lots of practical jokes… but we got there in the end. We’re all good now. Better than good. Super good. Well, those that came across to Torchwood. There’s still the death threats, but they’re not-”</p><p>“Bonnie…”</p><p>“I can manage,” Bonnie says hotly, her eyes suddenly shining with unshed tears. “I can cope with it all, alright? Don’t think I can’t. I’ll be fine.”</p><p>“What death threats?” the Doctor demands to know, suddenly looking up with eyes that are shining with injustice. It’s a far cry from the Time Lady who had stood in the TARDIS and talked about punishment. “Where are you living?”</p><p>“They don’t matter.”</p><p>“They do,” Clara insists, leaning forward and settling her free hand over Bonnie’s. “Let us help you like you’ve just helped me. Please.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“Was it true?” the Doctor asks later that evening. They’re in bed together, their hands entwined as they each devour a novel, and Clara’s head is resting on the Doctor’s shoulder. It’s not especially comfortable, but it’s reassuring.</p><p>“Was what true?”</p><p>“That you loved me from the first time you saw me.”</p><p>Clara’s cheeks burn hot, and she lays her book over her face like a shield.</p><p>“Maybe,” she admits, refusing to look at the Doctor. “Maybe not.”</p><p>“So… yes.”</p><p>“So… shut up.”</p><p>“We wasted so much time,” the Doctor says sadly. “So, so much time.”</p><p>“Yes,” Clara rolls her eyes, looking up at her partner and sticking her tongue out. “And now we’ve stopped wasting time. And isn’t that what matters in the end?”</p>
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